The Siege of Haniya [ONC2024] ✔

5. City of Haniya...and Nightmares

Chapter Five : The City of Haniya...and Nightmares

The journey towards the nearest city, where Jaafar worked as a tourist guide, proved to be a daunting task and not as enthusiastic as I imagined. If there was something important that could hinder our journey, the basic rule of a tourist guide was that he ought to warn us about the upcoming difficulty. So that we could decide whether we wanted to continue the journey.

An hour after we hit the road towards the city, Jaafar finally felt the need to inform us that the city had just been free from a siege by the Akkadiyah's army as he drove the truck into the empty desert. Hearing the name of the kingdom that banished us a couple of weeks ago, both Prof. El-Azizi and Leila began to yell in Arabic towards Jaafar, multiple strings of words I did not wish to know.

I leaned my head against the window, looking over the dreaded, empty desert. I fought the urge to open the truck's door and ran into Reem's arms again, begging to follow her wherever she went. Guilt haunted my entire being as I remembered the Bedouin family and their overflowing kindness. Abu Ali sold a couple of their goats to buy this second-hand truck and hired Jaafar to bring me to Aman.

It's not his fault; Jaafar was a fraud. It's not my fault that Prof. El-Azizi and Leila wanted to follow me. But everything happened because of me.

A sigh left my lips. Only an hour passed since we left, but I already missed Reem, Abu Ali, Umm Ali, and the children. I clutched the key hanging from my neck. Umm Ali found the key in my pocket while she washed my dress, and Ali took a string of rope to slip it into the key's bow to make a necklace.

I closed my eyes. A screaming contest between three people in a cramped space was never a good idea, especially when one of them was gripping the steering wheel with one hand.

"Stop." Anger raced through my veins as my words fell into deaf ears. My eardrums ached with the shrieking of a foreign language. "I said STOP!".

The truck came to a halt as silence fell over the atmosphere. Three pairs of eyes stared at me, and the anger and annoyance lingered in the air.

"Just go to the city. There's no going back now," I said bitterly to Jaafar, who knew some English.

Rubbing my temples, I heaved a sigh. Abu Ali's family and their tribes must have headed to the east by that time. Even if we took a U-turn and went to Abu Ali's camp, there was no guarantee that they were still there.

Through the rearview mirror, Jaafar flashed a smirk at Prof. El-Azizi and Leila before starting the truck again. "Of course, ma'am."

I rolled my eyes as the truck sped through the empty desert. I couldn't bear to glance behind the backseat; the guilt would eat me alive. The rest of the journey towards the border of the city was filled with uncomfortable silence looming in the air. It was hard to start a conversation when two of the passengers were fuming with anger.

"We will reach the city in half an hour," said Jaafar, cutting through the silence. Mostly directed at me.

We had reached a cultivated area as some grass and palm trees decorated the roadside.

After an excruciating number of hours of awkward silence, we finally reached a well-made road and a wooden sign board saying, Welcome to Haniya.

"What happened to Haniya?" I asked as the roadsides were filled by debris, trash, and chunks of metal. Only a few vehicles-half of those were big trucks with banners showcasing their donors-could be seen speeding on the two-way roads.

"The siege," Jaafar began. "It destroyed many things."

Prof. El-Azizi hummed, the first sound he made since my outburst. "Haniya is the closest border to Akkadiyah's south. When the kingdom began their insane land expansion, the cities that bordered Akkadiyah suffered the most."